The Test

Kamil calls me on Thursday afternoon, without ceremony. Ellen, it is better that you do the test tomorrow morning. He has booked it for you, and they are making things much harder very soon. My bike is hors de combat with a dead battery, I have to do an interview and submit the article the same evening, and I am due in the recording studio at 10am. But, Kamil … . This is Lebanon. I will go, having only desperately Googled instructions for automatic scooters at 1am.

In a state of sleep-deprived nerves, then, I enter the now-familiar state of ignorant, passive foreigner, being led from room to grey, stained room of government buildings by kindly, sweaty men who grin and offer me Nescafé, and discuss me in Arabic while shuffling and stamping tottering piles of carbon copies. Pierre is my wasta for this round, a little bent man with a greasy forelock and banker’s pink-striped shirt. He has a screaming argument with someone in the corridor outside his office, while I sit inside and look out of the grimy window at a truncated section of the car park. To make his final point, he strides over to a metal door, carbon copies in hand, opens it and throws them inside, to where I just glimpse a room of tables and shelves so jammed and piled with blue, green and pink papers as to resemble a bloated pile of innards, ready to vomit everything out into the corridor at any moment. He returns, switches his computer off and says curtly in Arabic It is all fine. You will only have to sign.

More rooms, more chairs, more men. I am ferried to and fro by hands in the small of my back as I am explained and bargained over. Eventually, in a room full of computers set up for the theory test, I stand and wait my turn. Thirty people enter, seat themselves, and fiddle disinterestedly with their belongings. Only a couple of people make any move to click their screens, and men move to and fro between the desks. Ten minutes later, they rise en masse and are hustled out to the cars – 3a siyyara! 3a siyyara!* When my turn comes, I study the first screen, which has the option to choose Arabic, English or French. A man appears at my shoulder and clicks for Arabic, then does the test for me – 30/30 in 15 seconds. Khalas, done, yalla, let’s go.

In the arena of the practical test, I sit on a bench and watch people drive cars for ten metres, stop, reverse five, then get out and sign their successful pass sheet. My latest escort, Boutros, takes me straight to the signing booth and presents me to its guardian. There is some problem. Pierre must be called. I wait and listen for the tone of the sign-off, which is a now-familiar musical riff of success – OK, tayeb, yalla. Eh, tayeb. OK, yallabye. Notes change hands, bored officials wave you on. Boutros has been briefed, and drives me all the way to Mansourieh on the boss’s orders. Are you married? He asks. How long will you stay in Lebanon? You should get a Lebanese boyfriend, then you would learn Arabic very quickly.

Despite my nerves, none of this surprises me in the slightest. As far as Lebanon is concerned, and once I have paid the wasta at my end, I am ready to drive. The whole licence and registration process will cost me about five hundred pounds.

I am only half an hour late for the studio, where it turns out I have about two lines to record. I spend the rest of the afternoon watching Wes Anderson films on James’s laptop while our supervisor Nancy puts on makeup and discusses her new boyfriend, a Lebanese businessman working in Nigeria who she met on Facebook.

This is Lebanon. Happy driving.